Russian possessives

[Jules Levin]

>  Subject: Re: Russian possessive question
>
>  Just a quick side-bar comment on this.  American official and semi-official
>  documents are replete with grammatical infelicities.  Just because it has
>  fancy seals on it doesn't mean it was vetted by the Academy grammarians...
>  --Jules Levin
>
>  At 08:34 AM 3/6/96 -0400, you wrote:
>  >I recently saw an Attestat zrelosti. It contains the line:
>  >Nastojashchij attestat daet ego vladel'cu pravo postuplenija v vysshie
>  >uchebnye zavedenija Sojuza SSR.
>  >And the same thing in Ukrainian, since this was from the Ukr. SSR:
>  >Cej atestat daje joho vlasnykovi pravo vstupu v vyshchi uchbovi zaklady
>  >Sojuzu RSR.
>  >Can someone tell me why it is "ego vladel'cu/joho vlasnykovi" and not
>  >"svoemu vladel'cu/svojemu vlasnykovi"?
>  >
>  >Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
>  >Department of Linguistics
>  >Morrill Hall, Cornell University
>  >Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.
>  >tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
>  >fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
>  >e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu (1989 to 1993 was: jn5j at cornella.bitnet //
>  >jn5j at cornella.cit.cornell.edu)
>  >
>
>
>End of returned message
>
>